hope is the thing with feathers
by asuiah
Summary: I saved a man. He was no feeble rabbit, nor a squishy slug. By society's standards, he was not even human, not regarded as a person. He thought monstrous things, did monstrous things, but I saved his life. If anyone knew, they'd be horrified. They'd ask me why. Listen.
1. prologue

Hugely inspired by Shades of Sunrise by mrie (a Sakura/Itachi story). I decided I'd like to try out their writing style, but I don't think I can do it justice... (it's truly beautiful and raw)

Also inspired by Emily Dickinson's ""Hope" is the thing with feathers"

tags: Quirkless Reader, Past Domestic Violence, Past Abuse, Healing, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Quirk Discrimination, POV First Person/First Person Narrative, Chisaki Kai | Overhaul Being an Asshole, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love

* * *

I suppose you want to ask me why I saved him.

It's not a question you'd usually ask a hero. Even so, it's not a circumstance where anyone wouldn't question you for doing it. Nobody would want to know if it was a rabbit I saved. Nobody would blink an eye if I told them I rescued a slug from being crushed under someone's shoe.

I saved a man. He was no feeble rabbit, nor a squishy slug. By society's standards, he was not even human, not regarded as a person. He thought monstrous things, did monstrous things, but I saved his life.

If anyone knew, they'd be horrified. They'd ask me why.

Imagine this:

I was lonely. At the time, I'd been lonely for a while. Suffering through my previous relationship had left me sad and gloomy and most of all, kind. I'd been wronged so foully that it left a sourness to my vision, I'd been hurt so thoroughly it'd left a barrier of caution in my throat and strained my words. My confidence had not been so much stolen but savagely beaten.

There grew sympathy for those like me, festering in my veins, gripping me like vice. I looked at people a different way, some more than others. You must understand that I was a coward back then, miserable and hysterical from the weight of finally being free but not feeling quite right. I could not forget. But I could empathize. When I saw him in that alley, splattered bloody in the shadow of the morning sunrise, it was already too late.

I could not turn back.

Listen. He might've been a villain, or an innocent bystander. It didn't matter to me, at that moment, and even then I wouldn't have taken the risk of walking away from a potentially innocent person. I was a rush, my ears mute to any sound other than the drum of my heartbeat, tripping and stumbling through my shock in order to get to him.

I'd seen double, in that moment, and I remembered myself in a similar place, at a similar time, drenched in a similar colour. I remembered the taste of bloody betrayal on my tongue, the terror of my unmoving legs, the feeling of being overwhelmed that I'd die there; murdered by my own boyfriend.

Do you know what it's like, thinking that you would die alone, and that nobody would even give you a passing thought afterwards?

What I don't remember: Dragging myself up under the dark of night, exhausted and defiant. The struggle of walking to the hospital six blocks away, lines of blood streaking down my legs, tears distorting my vision, breath quivering on my dry lips. I was told that I'd dropped into survival mode, that even if I'd been stripped of all but my will to live, beyond all reason, I'd had fight in me.

What I do remember, vividly, strikingly, was wishing for help - how I laid there for hours bleeding out, crying out, wondering where the heroes were, waiting for a savior who never came. In the end, I only had myself, and were not for my refusal to die, I would've been long gone from this world.

It was so incredibly lonely, thinking I was dying alone, muted and betrayed and angry, grief like acid on my tongue. I was an unlit candle forgotten in the night.

And this man, drenched in blood, pale as death, was so very still, so very familiar to my very real nightmare, so very alone.

Listen.

I could not turn back.


	2. one in death

Looking back, I remember it like an old photograph, tinged hazy melancholy with morning mist, the sun still asleep but the starless sky bleeding midnight blue against dark, smoky clouds. It was light enough to only see shadows and the bright of the streetlights. It was stupid really, for me to be out in the time that even the earth deemed both too late and too early, even worse when I lived in an area like mine, but it was trash day and I had to be at work before the sun rose – which meant I had no choice but to take the risk unless I wanted to live with the rancid, sour smell for a whole extra week. An easy choice for someone like me, who didn't tend to leave their apartment for much other than work. What's wrong with just a minute outside to take out the trash?

It was scary, and I was a young woman just shy of twenty, and it was definitely a bad idea.

I remember the silence of the gloomy alley, so still it felt like even a thought could be heard, unnerving like unseen hands when your back is turned, when the roads rest quiet, when you feel as if there are breaths mingling with your own in an empty room. I did not bring my flashlight deliberately, not willing to draw so much attention to myself in such a shady neighborhood, knowing my way enough not to fumble in the dark. The plastic of the trash bag was squeaky, uncomfortable and tight in my hand, weighed down and stretchy in the way where it feels like it's going to snap and splatter all kinds of foulness. I'd felt slightly sickened by the jostle that sent a bead of liquid out the lackluster knot I formed at the opening, a sticky, smelly texture clinging to my fingers; unmistakably the residue of the moldy pineapple I'd forgotten to eat. I'd nearly tripped over myself, stumbling in my haste to be rid of it.

It's when I turned right out the door, counting seven large silent steps in my head and reaching out to feel my way to the rusty side of the trash container, that I heard it. A choked wheeze, a splutter of breath, a cough of forced-quiet.

It rang through the alley with such clarity that my answering intake of breath had felt like a shout, like a screamed answer. I startled, overwhelmed with panic. The force of my heartbeat was like a jackhammer against my suddenly tense, coiled muscles, a wrathful earthquake rocking my veins. Horror overcame my lungs.

I distinctly remember wondering, would this be where I die, rotting in the trash, another quirkless statistic added to the leader-board, faceless and forgotten. _Dumbass_! I wailed to myself, desperately wishing I'd stayed in. My legs were screaming, tearing up, crying, begging me to move but my eyes took over, the need to find what had rattled my bones and avoid it all-consuming and ravenous. I searched hungrily, scanning the rough, dirty concrete, the shadows that scrounged the ground, the pipes that clung to the brick. And then, like a heart attack, there was movement, something white like paper and just as smooth, shifting under the warm light of the apartment's backdoor window.

There was a man slumped against the arch of the neighboring apartment building's alley door, half-hidden in the shadow of the building. The window of light caught on his agonized expression, sharp and twisted against the pale hollows of his face, the half-lidded stare to his weak, dead set eyes. He flinched in a rumbling groan, a flash of blood splattered on milky cheekbone, quickly erased by the slump of his head. Then, like lightning, his eyes snapped wide open, all gold-tinged grief and pain and utter terror.

He was staring in my direction, where I'd become aware of cold air lingering on my gaping mouth, the bitter stab of a scream escaping my throat, croaky and terrified, cut off before it could be loud enough to be fully heard. My eyes, burning with the onslaught of held-back tears, had adjusted to the dim light he'd found himself under, and I could see large stains on his clothes – liquid pooling inkily underneath him, colorless in the dark – I knew to be blood.

Victim, villain, it didn't matter. All thoughts left my head, swept away by the sinking feeling that encompassed my being. There was a man dying in front of me.

Helpless, he sat with an expression so defeated and hollow it was like he was a blank shell. I remember with clarity that it was not the face of a man looking to kill me, but rather someone who had already accepted death. Sharply, plainly, I saw myself like a ghost in his place, mind flashing to a lonely, moonless night under the stars, bleeding sluggishly in the dark.

The thud of my trash bag hitting the ground was forgotten, my fear rendered deaf by my concern. Like an graceless idiot, I threw myself to his side blindly, the glare of the light spotting my vision, and through the blurriness I saw him focus on my face.

"Oh my god," I cried in one breath, "Oh fuck— you need a hospital—"

"Leave me," he growled, and flinched away from me as if I was the filthy one with sweat and dirt and sticky, metallic-smelling blood. His deathly pale face twisted, gaunt-looking and bitter. Painful. "I-It's over–– I will die here."

There was naked fear on his face. I doubted I'd ever forget it, or the way it sent something cold down my bones. Despite his terror, he was utterly resigned, hopeless even with my presence. It'd spooked me, froze me. I scrambled for words but they'd escaped me.

Eyes caught mine, hazy in pain yet sharp in focus. "Leave."

Sudden anger overwhelmed my senses. It was unlike me, so usually careful and guarded, but this situation was anything but normal. I felt disappointed, betrayed almost, like I'd been robbed of something.

"Like hell," I said, fierce and angry.

His face slackened in muted shock, and if he weren't on the ground in a fountain of blood I might've laughed.

"I'm calling you an ambulance," I reached for my phone only to find my pockets empty, and cursed my unorganized self. What kind of idiot goes into a sketchy alley at night without a phone in case of an emergency? This sucker right here.

"No hospital," he growled roughly, huffing as if annoyed. I deadpanned. I'd thought, at the time, that he was an utter idiot. I couldn't tell how extensive his wounds were, but he'd clearly needed a hospital if he thought he was gonna die. Not to mention the blood. "If you call for one, I'll make sure to die before they arrive."

"Someone needs to give you medical attention!" I insisted. Under the discovery of his stubbornness, my worry had grown to new heights. God, how much time did this man have left before he succumbed to a miserable, painful death? My fingers trembled where they hung in the air near him, directionless and awkward.

"If you want me to live so badly, you do it, then," he retorted, like a petulant child, and coughed wetly. He was driving me crazy. It felt like talking to a dismissive boulder. I'd never wanted to smack a wounded man until right then. "If you call for a hospital, I will die."

Distant realization clicked in the back of my head, that he had something to fear there, that maybe he was a gangster, a thug, maybe even a villain. It was crystal clear to me, even then, that he'd meant what he said. Despite that, I couldn't leave him. I felt magnetized, drawn to the thought of him alive.

"You bastard," I said with tearful resignation, my blood simmering hotly in my veins. "Okay, fine. Fine. What the fuck. I-I'll do it." Never-mind that the only wounds I'd ever tended to had been my own. I was determined, desperate for him to live, frenzied in a way I'd never felt.

He looked a little stunned, something unreadable to his pain-filled gaze.

"But you have to do something for me, too," I said, firm, senselessly vehement, "_Live_."

* * *

There is a kind of horrifying helplessness in seeing someone on their deathbed.

He might've been a monster, he might've killed and caused hurt and not thought twice about it.

But he was dying, cold and alone, abandoned and armless. He could've dragged himself away, could have sought help, could have let the heroes take him. He could have lived if he'd wanted to.

He'd meant to die. I could see that. Do you know what that's like? Giving up on your life so young? I knew what that felt like once. I knew what it felt like in the aftermath too. What could I do but help?

Listen.

He was a villain. He could've killed me. At that moment, none of it mattered.

I could not leave him there to die.


End file.
